Rick’s Cucumber and Onion Salad

The cucumber and onion salad was very simple to make, but it wasn’t overly exciting in flavor.

I started preparing the salad in the morning before I left for work, since the recipe says the cucumber needs to sit in the dressing for several hours or overnight.

What was particularly strange about this recipe is that onion is included in both the title and the ingredients of the recipe, but is never once mentioned among the recipe steps. So I decided to add it to the bowl of cucumbers at the very beginning of the recipe, since that seemed to be the most logical place to include them.

The dressing was the most amount of work since it was made over the stove, but even so it wasn’t very difficult.

When it was time to serve the salad, all it required was some tossing to make sure the dressing was evenly distributed.

Taste: 6/10

It was okay. Not surprisingly, it tasted like cucumber and onion. The dressing didn’t really add very much to the overall flavor.

Difficulty: Easy

Just some chopping and boiling action. Nothing too difficult!

Cost: Cheap

There really wasn’t a lot involved in this one. Of course you’ll need onion and cucumber, but other than that it was apple cider vinegar, sugar, and other items that are typical in a kitchen. Celery seeds may be the only other item you’ll need to purchase.

Greene Family Farm Roast Chicken

This one was a really interesting and different recipe than any chicken recipe I’ve tried before.

We had to ask our butcher to “spatchcock” the chicken for us, as per the instructions. The recipe says the butcher will be happy to do this for us, but we got a lot of strange looks until we explained that it meant removing the chicken’s backbone so it can lie flat.

The chicken is covered with oil and fresh chopped herbs before being laid flat in a pan over the stove.

Then it requires something I’ve heard of, but had never actually done myself before: the chicken is weighed down with a pan filled with foil-covered bricks (or with cans of food, which is the alternative option I decided to do).

It cooks over the stove for about 20 minutes underneath this heavy pan until the skin is crispy. It took me more like 30 minutes to get the skin right.

At this point, the chicken is flipped, more garlic and herbs are added to the pan, and into the oven it goes for the last stretch.

Taste: 8/10

The chicken was very moist, and the herbs worked well with it. It’s a pretty basic chicken dish, though, aside from the part where it needs to be pushed flat.

Difficulty: Average

There is a lot of chopping of herbs involved, and you do need to have enough cans or bricks or other heavy items to efficiently weight down the chicken so it’s lying flat in the pan. The chicken was a little awkward to work with and move around in the pan due to its size, and you may need to cook it in the pan longer than the recipe calls for.

Cost: Below Average

You’ll have to buy a full chicken, which is the biggest cost. The rest is mostly herbs, which you may already have in your garden.

Suggestion:

It would be pretty simple to recreate this recipe using chicken breasts instead of a full chicken if you’re cooking just for two. I’ll probably end up using all of the leftover chicken to make a broth or soup later this week.